As a result of increasing transportation of goods by single-item and consolidated-freight journeys, transporting operations by truck or container, ocean-cargo or air-freight package transporting operations in the area of e-commerce and online mail-order business, the number of transported goods, and in particular parcel deliveries and consignments, has increased. Although it is possible nowadays to place an order online independently of conventional store opening times, the delivery of the consignment to the recipient almost always takes place by traditional delivery methods, for example by postmen, or in the case of parcel deliveries by motorized delivery vehicles, but essentially only within store opening times. If the recipient cannot be found when the delivery is made, for example because, as a person who has a job, he or she is at work during store opening times, it is attempted to deliver the consignment at another time or the consignment is left at a branch of the delivery company to be picked up by the recipient. Although there has for some time been the possibility of leaving consignments at a holding point, for example at a DHL Packstation, such holding points are not yet universally available, and consequently are not an alternative in every case.
Therefore, recently attempts have been made to deliver consignments to the recipient or the holding point by unmanned flyable transporting devices, for example by an unmanned flying device also known as a parcelcopter or drone. Regularly used in these attempts is a receiving container for receiving and keeping the consignment, to which the transporting device can transfer the consignment or from which the transporting device can pick up the consignment. Once the consignment has been transferred by the transporting device to the receiving container, which is for example installed in a front yard or on a roof of a house of the recipient or, for a municipality, is provided for a plurality of recipients, the consignment can also be removed from the receiving container outside store opening times.
In the aforementioned attempts, the actual transfer of the consignment from the transporting device to the receiving container has proven to be particularly difficult. For example, “dropping” the consignment from the transporting device onto the receiving container is not possible, in order not to damage fragile consignments.